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GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GT 1030 has a core clock speed of 1265 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 16 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GT 1030 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

144128 MB/sec

GeForce GT 1030

49152 MB/sec

Difference: 94976 (193%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be quite a bit (more or less 53%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030

40480 Mtexels/sec

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

26400 Mtexels/sec

Difference: 14080 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

26400 Mpixels/sec

GeForce GT 1030

20240 Mpixels/sec

Difference: 6160 (30%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

GeForce GT 1030

Amazon.com

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x.
The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image).
The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

GeForce GT 1030

Amazon.com

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.